We Wish You a Meta-Christmas

No, I don't want this for Christmas. I don't need one. But wow! The price.

I paid $750 for a color HP Deskjet when they first came out, and it kind of sucked and in fact I took it back. You couldn't do color printing with black; you could print colors and there'd be a pseudo-black, but if you wanted true black you had to take out the color cartridge and install a black-ink cartridge. I sent HP a strongly worded note telling them what they had to do.

About a year later, totally having nothing to do with my note, they released a new one for about $600 and I bought that. It was a lot better. Now they pretty much give them away if to get you to buy their ink cartridges. (see, Gillette).

So it's wonderful that you can buy a da Vinci Jr for $350. Chances are, it'll be out of date in a year, and the materials it uses to make objects are carcinogens.

But if I got one, I'd have to make like a snow-globe with a 3-d printer inside of it.